Lewis Hamilton has demanded Mercedes address their tactics when managing the racing between himself and his teammate George Russell after the pair repeatedly vied with one another at the Japanese Grand Prix. Hamilton said it was time Mercedes ensure the pair worked as a team.
While Max Verstappen cantered to a win at the front of the field for Red Bull, Hamilton and Russell were locked in the most lengthy and fractious showdown on track the pair have entered into all season, with both drivers giving no quarter. Hamilton ultimately finished fifth and Russell seventh, the latter on a one-stop strategy compared to Hamilton’s two-stopper.
Early in the race they went wheel to wheel as Russell indicated he was in no mood to wait for team orders when he passed Hamilton on track, only for the seven-time champion to immediately come back at him and retake the place at turn one.
The scrap continued when Hamilton made a minor error, Russell once more came at him and the 38-year-old resisted by pushing him wide at Spoon corner. “Who do we want to fight here, each other or the others?” Russell pointedly asked the team over the radio.
Then, late in the race as Russell had to make his tyres go long, the team insisted he swapped places with Hamilton who was behind but quicker on fresher rubber. Russell was not enamoured of the plan but was unequivocally told it was an “instruction”. The switch left both drivers, and especially Russell, vulnerable to Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who was also on newer tyres and soon passed Russell.
Having also been told to slow to allow Russell the use of DRS to defend against Sainz, Hamilton felt the Mercedes tactics had been muddled at best.
“Because he was trying to fight me he was damaging his tyres and I think it just made it all complicated,” Hamilton said. “The fact is we are not fighting each other in the team championship. As drivers it is not important where we are. What is important is that one of us finishes ahead of the Ferrari and to keep the position. Today we really needed to work as a team.”
The call to slow to give his teammate DRS also exasperated Hamilton. “I don’t think that was a good idea at all,” he said. “I had to come off the gas down the straight, then he got overtaken by Sainz. He got past George and was right on my tail which was not ideal.”
With Red Bull clinching the constructors’ title, Mercedes are in a fight for second with Ferrari. They are now just 20 points ahead with six meetings remaining.
Russell agreed that the team’s central aim should be maximising points and said there was no ill-feeling with Hamilton. “The goal is to finish ahead of Ferrari this season and keep on working for next year. No issues on my side,” he said.
“I viewed it as good, hard racing. Of course we lost a bit of overall time fighting each other. You are a bit frustrated on the radio but that is just part of racing. We are not even going to discuss it, there is nothing to discuss. We have bigger fish to fry which is how do we make the car go quicker.”
